Recent Reviews
The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish
Rachel Kadish’s The Weight of Ink is possibly my favorite book of 2018. In every page, I could feel Kadish’s passionate commitment to her characters and to the historical period she describes. Her appreciation of the written word is evident as she captures both the smallest details and largest historical themes. At one level the novel is a mystery to be solved. Yet due to Kadish’s skills as a writer and thinker, we are exposed to other levels of inquiry and thought: philosophy, the nature of love, religious viewpoints, moral obligations, the existence of God, gender roles and the power of the past to affect the present. No lightweight list of ideas to contemplate.
The novel opens in 2000. Helen Watt is a Professor of History at a University in London. When a former student asks her to examine a cache of old letters discovered in a 350 year-old-home he recently inherited, Helen is astounded by what she finds. She knows immediately these letters, written in Hebrew and Portuguese from the 1660s, are historically significant.
The novel then shifts to London in 1657. We meet Ester Valasquez, a young woman in her late teens who was adopted by Rabbi HaCoen Mendes after her parents died. Rabbi Mendes and Ester have left Amsterdam and traveled to London where the Rabbi will lead a small Jewish community. Because he was tortured for not renouncing his faith during the Inquisition, Rabbi Mendes is now blind. Though the rabbi does not support women reading or writing, Ester is a skilled scribe and secretly assists with his correspondence.
Though 400 years separate Helen and Ester, both women seek to utilize their intellectual gifts. Their identities are intrinsically connected to their ability to think and express themselves by writing down their thoughts. Ester says, “.... the unpooling of ink has brought me much comfort always, and often have I written what I would not speak.” However, the religious, social and political customs of that time period do not allow women that option. Esters complains, “A woman’s body was a prison in which her mind must wither.” Nonetheless, Ester develops a way to communicate her own thoughts even as she continues to scribe for the Rabbi. This bold decision contributes to the mystery of these letters three centuries later. In 2000, women participate fully in academia. However, Helen Watt still faces sexism and isolation by the male colleagues in her department. Yet because of brave women like Ester Valequez, Helen Watt publishes her thoughts under her own name.
Kadish’s novel also illuminates the unfair and precarious plight of the Jews. Though fortunate to be in London and not Spain, the Jewish community of London in the late 17th century is at the mercy of the clerical and political leaders of London. An acquaintance of Ester says, “… to be a Jew in this world, I understand is a danger. If a Jew speaks the truth of his faith in the wrong moment, though that faith harms none, he brings down untold wrath.” Kadish depicts the texture of oppression the Jewish community faced during this time.
Rotating between two time structures can be difficult. Often readers connect to the characters in one time period but not characters in the other. In The Weight of Ink I felt immersed in the characters’ struggles from both time periods. At 560 pages, The Weight of Ink is not a short read, but it is an emotionally, intellectually and worthwhile one.
There There by Tommy Orange
Review published in the San Francisco Examiner on October 28, 2018
http://www.sfexaminer.com/oaklands-urban-indians-come-life-exquisite/
Tommy Orange’s There There has been a Bay Area bestseller for a reason. His novel is exquisitely wrought and tells the story of twelve characters who plan to attend a “Big Oakland Powwow”. They are not traveling from rural reservations. As Orange says, they are “Urban Indians” who call Oakland home. They live in a cityscape where BART stations, the Oakland Coliseum, and the Grand Lake Theater mark the terrain.
The book’s title is borrowed from Gertrude Stein. When her Oakland home was torn down and her old neighborhood redeveloped, she observed that the “there” of her childhood had ceased to exist. As one of the novel’s characters, Dean Oxendene states, “But for Native people in this country, all over the Americas, it’s been developed over, buried ancestral land, glass and concrete and wire and steel, unreturnable covered memory. There is no there there.”
Orange begins this uniquely structured book with a prologue recounting the cruel history of efforts to eradicate the Native American peoples. He describes the betrayal and brutality that the Native Americans endured as they negotiated with successive waves of Europeans including the Pilgrims. He reminds us how violent a history it has been.
Each subsequent chapter is the story of a single character. We learn their histories and hopes, their strengths and sorrows as they prepare for the powwow. They each have their own reasons for attending - some practical, some profound. Orange writes, “We made powwows because we needed a place to be together.” Many of the characters work at the Indian Center. They struggle with alcohol, drugs, poverty, mental illness, violence and shame. We meet Tony Loneman who was born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. We meet Orvil, Loother, and Lony Red Feather whose mother committed suicide. We meet Calvin Johnson who is bipolar and whose brother is a drug dealer. Each of the character’s stories is emotional, raw and intimate. As we learn about them we understand why their lives are so difficult. Orange points us to a James Baldwin belief, “People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.”
Yet, these characters are not as bitter as one might expect, though most live on the edge. Rather, they navigate their present lives while carrying the psychic pain of their ancestors’ suffering. These Urban Indians persevere and find their own unique ways of expressing their Native heritage in Oakland.
The characters vary by tribe, age, gender and attitude. About their collective past, they have different interpretations. They voice fervent beliefs and existential observations. Tony Loneman says of his ancestors, “They must not’ve had street smarts back then. Let them white man come over here and take it from them like that.” Another character Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield says, “Don’t ever let anyone tell you what being Indian means. Too many of us died to get just a little bit of us here, right now, right in this kitchen.”
Orange weaves together these individual stories as the plot plays out in surprising ways at the powwow at the Coliseum. The Natives have come to dance, celebrate, sell crafts and just be together as Natives. But a few of the characters have nefarious plans. Violence lurks, the dancing ends, and the powwow crescendos to a chilling climax.
Tommy Orange’s book is a literary burst of pain and rage leavened by understanding and empathy. Orange has reimagined and updated the story of the Native people of our country. He has a sympathetic ear for the psychological burden that the past brings to the present. There There is the work of a talented and urgent new voice on the literary scene.
Secrets and Shadows by Roberta Silman
Roberta Silman’s Secrets and Shadows adds another important narrative to the numerous novels about Jewish families who endured the crazed cruelty of the Nazis during WWII. The novel also illuminates how fast democratic norms can be diminished until they erode completely leaving anarchy and evil in their place.
When the Berlin Wall falls in November of 1989, Paul Bertram calls his ex-wife Eve and asks her to accompany him to Germany. Given their almost non-existent communication, the request baffles Eve but she nonetheless agrees to join him.
As they visit the Berlin landmarks of Paul’s childhood, Paul recounts the incremental loss of freedom he and his family experienced in the 1940s. As a boy, Paul was known as Paulie Berger. His family was Jewish and his father owned a jewelry store. When it became clear that leaving Berlin was not viable, Paul’s parents arranged for a Gentile family, with whom they were friends, to move into the Berger’s home. The Berger family, in turn, moved into a hidden room in the attic. As the Nazis crept closer, the Berger family fled to the forest. Before their departure, Paul made a spiteful decision that affected the Gentile family. He had never told anyone - until this trip.
Paul had immigrated to the United States and became quite successful. He attended college and law school, married his wife Eve and became the father of three children. Yet internally, he felt ashamed about the choices he made as a teenage boy. The psychological trauma of his wartime experiences stayed with him. The accumulated stress and guilt haunted his every move. Paul withdrew from his family, flew into wild rages and engaged in a series of public affairs. Finally, Eve and Paul divorced and retreated into separate lives.
What Eve learns about Paul’s boyhood experience shocks and saddens her. She had never pressed him for details during their marriage. She feared what she might hear. Now she understands that Paul’s emotional distance came from the horrors he witnessed and his need for self-punishment. For Paul, the trip is part confessional, part therapy and part detective work to answer his own questions about those years. A unique aspect of this novel is that Paul is able to return to his boyhood home and even encounter one of the people he had betrayed. His psychological healing may begin.
The structure of this novel feels disjointed and the prose can ramble. Nonetheless, it is another significant story of the inhumane treatment of Jews during WWII. These stories, fictionalized or not, must be known and heard. Though Paul and his family escaped the concentration camps, they experienced their own version of hell. Secrets and Shadows shows how unspoken trauma can reverberate through families. The novel also reminds us that even when good people band together to confront evil, sometimes it can be too late.
